A Movie A Day: Quint on MAN, WOMAN & CHILD (1983)I bet you a dollar I can make you laugh before they can count to 10.

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
I’m going to have do a quickie on this one. I’ve been up 23 hours at this point, but I had to get today’s column written and posted or else it wouldn’t hit until tomorrow morning. It’s all well and good since I don’t have much to say about today’s title anyway.
That’s not to say MAN, WOMAN & CHILD is a bad movie. I actually found it quite touching, if a little on the straightforward melodrama side of things.
We jump from yesterday’s Hammer Thriller THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY to today’s radically different movie via screenwriter David Z. Goodman, also responsible for the scripts to Sam Peckinpah’s awesome STRAW DOGS and ‘70s sci-fi kitsch masterpiece LOGAN’S RUN.
With MAN, WOMAN & CHILD, Goodman shares screenwriting credit with Erich Segal, author of the book upon which the film is based.
Basically the film is about how a family unit is shaken when the loving husband gets a phone call telling him the wild affair he had 10 years previously in France is about to come crashing home. His lover was killed in an accident and he learns for the first time that he had a son with her.
Martin Sheen plays Bob Beckwith, the adulterer who has to now confess to his wife, Sheila (Blythe Danner), that he was unfaithful. He feels the need to be there for his unknown son, even it means straining his marriage to the breaking point, forcing his wife to not only deal with the news of his affair, but also see the results of it in her own house, playing with their daughters.

Oh, and I swear to god Martin Sheen and his family live in Nancy’s house from A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. Sorry, had to make mention of that somewhere.
The acting is high quality throughout, obviously a passion project for Danner and Sheen. The direction by Dick Richards (MARCH OR DIE) isn’t anything to write home about, but it works. There is some very pretty imagery, but the movie falls into a weird period of cinema, some dead zone between the harsh grittiness of ‘70s cinema and the glam grainy neon of the ‘80s so on the whole it’s kind a bland looking movie.
But the strength of the story is on the actors and their characters. One particular favorite of mine pops up as Sheen’s best friend and lawyer, Bernie… Mr. Craig T. Nelson. I love the dude and his work, especially of this era. In fact, his small role in this film came just after his leading role in POLTERGEIST, one of my alltime favorites.
The two key relationships are Sheen and Danner and Sheen and his new son, Jean-Claude, played by Sebastian Dungan and I bought into both of those relationships, especially the father/son one.
Looking him up, Sebastian only has a few other credits… he went from the centerpiece of this movie to be the Paperboy in BETTER OFF DEAD (“I want my two dollars! TWO DOLLARS!!!”) to being a producer on TRANSAMERICA. What an odd career. But I’m surprised he didn’t act more. His work in this movie is very subtle. He’s a 10 year old that speaks with eyes more than his mouth… not very common.
Danner could easily have made her character completely unsympathetic and comes dangerously close when she starts hating on the adorable and innocent new addition to the family, but Danner plays Sheila as an incredibly hurt person, seemingly hanging off the edge of a great abyss that will destroy her whole family. And you can’t feel mad at her. It was her husband, afterall, who fucked around.
Final Thoughts: I’m not surprised this film has been forgotten for the most part, but it’s better than a lost film should be. It might not blow anyone’s socks off, but the story is raw and the performances make the melodrama tolerable, even affecting. My one point of contention… the youngest daughter is played by a girl who looks like a young Jake Gyllenhaal in drag and that disturbed me greatly. Just had to get that off my chest…

I love this feature and your commitment to it. Some of the films I don't care about(your last 10)but others I love and am anxious for your "fresh eyes" review. And others go right into Netflix. I look forward to it everyday.
P.S. SECOND!!!

I saw this on a plane when I was, like, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and I never thought about it after that. Finally, I know what the hell the story's about. The only things I can remember are the ending and when the sisters gang up on the little boy and slap him around a bit.
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Hey, Quint - have you thought about checking out a movie called "Rich Kids" with Trini Alvarado?

Love to see AMADs of Cross My Heart, which I loved, and A Simple Wish (a very strange broad farce with Short as a bumbling fairy godparent - with a homophobic emphasis on the fairy.)<p>Looking forward to tomorrow's review of Little Girl who Lives Down the Lane. I love that picture and hope it gets a full review, not one of these "I'm almost asleep and don;t have time" dismissals. Which, admittedly, is all some of these flicks deserve. but "TLGWLDTL" deserves better.

Perfect timing on that one, I just had been going through a bit of a "devil" phase after watching Mephisto's Waltz and reading The Club Dumas(Ninth Gate). Was looking for a good deal with the devil movie and added that one to the list just a day ago.

I was really excited when you started this experiment. I've tried the "movie a day" thing so many times and it always just falls apart thanks to life, job, demanded social interactions etc. So I was envious, especially since I'd love to "fill the gaps" of my own movie knowledge. And if you haven't seen Rio fuckin Bravo, you're definitely due for some Movie 101.
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But I have to say, this has gotten disappointing. I mean I don't think Blythe Danner soaps are a mandatory addition to any viewing history. Why don't you branch off to more foreign flicks? The early work of Luis Bunuel? Lesser known masterpieces of Asian cinema? When I saw Vengeance is Mine on the list I thought "Oh great, an Imamura!" but it turned out to be some damn Ernest Borgnine movie. I know you're doing your Kevin Bacon/connection game to get from one title to the next, but how about watching Winter Kills then following Toshiro Mifune over to Drunken Angel?
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I'm not one of those dudes who argues the "purity" of movies from different countries or whatever - if you haven't seen Gun Crazy, Barry Lyndon or The Elephant Man that needs to be instantly remedied - but how about a Bela Tarr or Satyajit Ray? Have you seen any of the Apu trilogy? Why not shake things up with a Fassbinder or a Tarkovsky? As far as connecting them, you could be more liberal: "This subpar Frank Sinatra title starts with an A, as does Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Arsenal."
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I don't want to tell you what should and should not be on your personal movie "must" list, but I'd move away from John Wayne and embrace Max von Sydow (and I don't mean Strange Brew - although if you haven't seen Strange Brew, you should.) Instead of Ryan O'Neal in Partners, Bernardo Bertolucci directing Partner. Something maybe a little more challenging and worthy of being written about than The Sound of Music. I don't know, what do you think?

the long list at the bottom, where Rio Bravo is mentioned are films Quint has seen<P>second, he's addressed this before, these are films he has in his collection (or recorded on to DVR in a couple of cases off TCM) that are linked by writer, director, star, editor, anything. But I KNOW he's said he has some french films coming up, but by his own admission it's been hard to find links to these English and American films to some good forign language films

I love 'em and have a lot to get through, thanks mainly to my Criterion stash. I have some Kurosawa and Fellini coming up, but like I've mentioned above it's difficult to connect early foreign flicks to the rest of my collection.<BR><BR>I know it seems arbitrary to connect these titles, but it's forcing a flow to the series that is keeping it interesting to me, forcing me into certain films I'd put on the back burner otherwise. If I didn't have this system, I'd just have two weeks of Hitchcock, two weeks of John Ford and then single big titles, leaving me with hundreds of DVDs that I'll never watch.<BR><BR>At some point I'll have to deviate from this style or else I'll never get to a lot of these foreign films and exploitation pictures, but it won't be for a long while.

If you don't enjoy reading about the films Quint has chosen to include in his AMAD feature, why read AMAD at all? Just to bitch in the TB? I mean it's not like there aren't a million other boards around covering films you ‘are’ interested in, or at least enjoy reading a about in a casual way, right? Film geeks come in all flavors and million tastes, but statistically anthologies of this sort featuring less popular, or less widely known/"forgotten" material in any art form tends to broaden enthusiasts' horizons, often leading to discoveries of material that appeals to them that they might not otherwise become aware of. *** Simple solution to your "problem": The web's a big place, you don't have to read it if you don't dig it, so why not hunt down something you enjoy more than bitching?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on both of those directors, as well as exploitation classics you may have missed. As long as the connection is making things fun and interesting for you that's fine, I'd just hate for you to ultimately be limited by it. And to Mrs. Harry Knowles and Skyway Moaters, I can't think of a better place to "name-drop" than this website, or a better place to "bitch" than a TB, although to be fair I don't exactly consider it name-dropping (it's not like I mentioned having lunch with Imamura) or bitching: I clearly am enjoying Quint's experiment or I wouldn't hope for a broader range of titles. Bloo you did not sound like a prick at all, if I misunderstood AMAD's criteria that should be corrected.

I too thought "Vengeance is Mine" was going to be the "Imamura", and actually was hoping it was cause i look at the damn Criterion DVD everytime I'm in a store and keep grabbing it and then changing my mind at the last minute. Would love a Quint review on that. <br><Br>Bela Tarr rocks my socks too, need to track more of his down soon!